50+ Lifestyles

Max’s Musings

By Max Molleston

Ending a year can be a real challenge. In particular the hunt, or the search. Presents for this gift season. The right gift; does it take a week, or months ? Or, does that time span shorten to a crunch? What does she or he want? Can the gift you find and wrap do the job? Can we please? Pushed these few questions your way because experience knows one situation is liable to happen. Gifts speak two languages. The senders, and the loved ones feelings. Grandmother, sister-in-law, wife, husband, boyfriend or girlfriend, and grandchildren. Much of the lore in this season of giving fades quickly to commercial connections of the suppliers. Clothiers, retail establishments of all kinds know it is the time to rally to needs of their bottom line. Gift giving decisions couple with best times to get that done.

We all must also deal with another end, as December days finally vanish. One of the best poets in China’s Sung Dynasty, Su Tung P’O, here in translation by Kenneth Rexroth, relates on the ending of a year. The poem is seventeen lines. We move you through a few of them.

When a year is gone, how will you ever find it again?
I wonder where it has gone, this year that is ended?
Certainly someplace far beyond the horizon.
It is gone like a river which flows to the East,
and empties into the sea without hope of return.

We leave the bygone year without regret.
Will we leave so carelessly the years to come?
Everything passes, everything
Goes and never looks back,
And we grow older and less strong.

Language translations are thorny propositions. Rexroth, in this book, ONE HUNDRED POEMS FROM THE CHINESE, presents one of ten volumes he has translated. Many from the Chinese, some from the Japanese, a biographical novel and essays on subjects of his choice. Rexroth’s book was in print at least eighteen times, which lends to its skilled translations and the excellence of his sustained efforts. The writer himself is quoted thusly: “I make no claim for the book as a piece of Oriental scholarship. Just some poems.”

We are pushed, then, to do our best for the people to whom we are responsible, those responsible for us, and partnerships forged in friendship and love as we gave of ourselves. Often we avert a claim of love and caring, far from the truth about our need for those we love and the lives given to us. We were gifts and are gifts. We try to understand that spirit and still trot to the Mall and wherever else. As a young child in my family, Christmas morning would come. A Railway Express truck pulled up and we saw the driver bringing a box filled with cookies from our aunt and uncle who were farmers. We welcomed each of those tasty gifts. December provides us time to think. To dream. Turn your thoughts into action just in time for Holiday giving. You and I will turn full attention to the new year after it arrives.